Born again Skeptic

The willful manipulation of an audience in propaganda and debate is a depressing fact of life to me.

1. I am interested in full understanding of an issue; best gained by rational discourse, scientific inquiry, and criticism.
2. I am also a fairly rabid supporter of freedom of expression.
3. I am most strongly an advocate of critical thinking skills as a tool to identify and be skeptical of positions based on propaganda, bias, and fallacy.

Given the foregoing, the best way to really piss me off is to use the public’s weak grasp of #3 to hamstring the process of #1 by rallying around a steaming pile of #2.

I’d like to direct your attention to this podcast:

In the upcoming a pro-Intelligent Design documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (starring comedy actor Ben Stein), several notable scientists speak in support of science and evolution, including evolutionary biologist (and outspoken atheist) Richard Dawkins, science blogger PZ Meyers, and Skeptics Society founder Michael Shermer. As Swoopy finds out this week when she talks with Dawkins and Shermer, Expelled is not the film these scientists agreed to be a part of—nor were their experiences at advanced screenings what they expected….

I have not seen the film; my second-hand impression is formed after listening to the interviews above. The main drive of the film is to cast science in the classroom as a free speech issue, and argue that personal beliefs of teachers ought to be allowed into the curriculum at their own discretion. My first reaction to this idea is that someone who holds unfalsifiable beliefs that conflict with the knowledge of their field might not make a great teacher of that subject. But I suppose it’s plausible that a teacher can impart knowledge that they don’t hold to personally.

More generally, the idea that science class should be a place where a teacher instills their personal belief system to students is ludicrous on its face.

Teaching unscientific things in science class is similarly ridiculous. If enough people want it to happen, though, then the public school curriculum can be changed to mandate such things. Having tried this approach largely in vain, creationists are now going grassroots and saying damn the curriculum– just do what you want.

How can this feeble approach hope to succeed? The average person doesn’t have a very strong penchant for critical thought. Even those who do can very easily be influenced by propaganda and biased debate around a subject in which they are not deeply versed. Make a propaganda film that leads your audience along step by step, and they will follow.

(Photo credit: RaeA)

I was reading an analysis at the Oil Drum about nuclear power use and scaling in France. As usual on TOD, the comments are brimming with insight and impassioned discourse. As a rebuttal to the modest conclusion of the article, one commenter linked to UIC Nuclear Issues Briefing Paper # 75, entitled Supply of Uranium. It looked like the start of a fine analysis, but then alarm bells sounded.

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Photo credit: Phil Moore

Everyone writes their own story of life. A staggering number of people choose to create a story where meaning comes from an external governor, a deus ex machina. A common conclusion of these folk is that non-theists, lacking this (arbitrary) anchor, must be adrift in life without purpose, moral values, or happiness.

But as writerdd quite eloquently observes, this need not be the case. Acknowledge and celebrate your own meaning.

The title of my first post was meant to sound profound and then be answered in a strictly literal sense about why we are “here” as in “on this web site”. Having slighted you so soon in our readership relationship, I feel I should at least give the profound subject some attention.

Fortunately, I like Richard’s post on this subject, so I can just point at it and say “me too”.

In my previous post I made brief mention of limitations on freedom of expression for hate speech. Today I found this interesting item on topic via Infidel Guy.

Former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore and attorneys with the Foundation for Moral Law, representing several Pennsylvania Christians, argued in a brief filed today in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that the state legislature violated the state constitution in 2002 when it added “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to the state’s “hate crimes” law …

Judge Roy Moore said about this important case:

“There is a dangerous trend surfacing in other countries and here in America where governments are trying to make it illegal to speak out against homosexuality …”

I think people should be able to say nasty things about homosexuality if they want, but not for the same reasons as Judge Moore:

even when such an immoral lifestyle is publicly paraded in the streets. … God alone has the ability to see, and the right to judge, the hearts and minds of men.”

Like most people (imo), he seems to simply be supporting free speech on a subject he agrees with. I assume if the bill had instead added penalties for hate speech directed at Christians, he would have found it reasonable.

An interesting facet to this story is how the contentious provision was attached to unrelated legislation to get it pushed through. For those who agree with any particular rider, this process is championed as a tool for the underdog. The opposition can equally well characterize it as a tool of asymmetric legislative warfare. But it gets used so often and to such a ridiculous extent that it loses any moral context and becomes business as usual– the easiest way to enact your agenda, sidestepping the quaint notion of debating a bill on its merits.

I support the One Subject At A Time Act, because I think that legislative compromise should mean coming to an agreement on something, not a back room quid pro quo. I’m not so naive to think OSTA would have only positive immediate results. In our current two-party feedback loop system, the minority party can use riders as a check against being steamrolled by the majority. But there must be a way to balance power that doesn’t involve this kind of trick.

(Photo credit: Steffe)

Growing up I learned about the (US) Constitution and particularly the Bill of Rights. There may even have been some limp discussion about why certain rights were added and what they’re good for. But we never talked about what I now understand to be the most important yet commonly overlooked reason to codify fundamental rights and limitations on the exercise of power– the tyranny of the majority.

When we learned about democracy it was touted as the cutting edge political system in the world, where all could prosper. Since everyone gets to vote, the power and guidance of the state rests (in theory) with all the people, instead of some elite ruling class. Leaving aside the inevitability of governmental scope-creep, power-grabbing, and corruption, there is a fairly serious blind spot built in to this system– who is to say that the majority knows what’s best?

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(Photo credit: the gordons)

I spent rather a long time contemplating the creation of this site. There seem to be many good reasons not to bother, including but not limited to:

• What do I have to say that merits reading; hasn’t everything of value been expressed before, by my intellectual and literary superiors?
• Aren’t I setting myself up for failure and facing an inevitable fate of blog-atrophy? Untended sites bleach lonely in the sun, soon colonized and eventually overgrown by spam comments. Abandoned pages linger in their decrepitude, the forlorn message of their prime lost to the entropy of an uncaring internet.
• Won’t people read the above bullet-point and think “What a pretentious git, thinks he can write all fancy..” ?
• What if my opinions anger people, and they burn down my internet?
• For that matter, who are these alleged people? Will anyone in fact find this site and stay long enough to care? Why are you here, if you are at all?

I’ll try not to be pretentious, and as for my writing I will consider it a victory if I can communicate without you dosing off or becoming irate too often.

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